


where do we go from here?

by shroom_system



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, Dangan Ronpa 3: The End of 希望ヶ峰学園 | The End of Kibougamine Gakuen | End of Hope's Peak High School, Super Dangan Ronpa 2
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Graphic Description of Corpses, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Minor Character Death, The Tragedy of Hope's Peak Academy, it isn’t quite yet but it will be, those are your tw do with them as you please this is the tragedy after all
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-27
Updated: 2020-09-18
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:46:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,733
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25547656
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shroom_system/pseuds/shroom_system
Summary: despair is a funny thing.it gets to you, goes to your brain, it’s suffocating and awful and disgusting and it’s so hard to get rid of.the remnants of despair created this world of sorrow, and they shall watch as hope is rebuilt, as the world heals and they do too.
Relationships: Kamukura Izuru/Komaeda Nagito
Kudos: 73





	1. despair

**Author's Note:**

> here’s your trigger warning in case you don’t read tags: graphic description of corpses, implied suicide (i never use the word but it is strongly implied and referenced), general death, general blood.
> 
> IF YOU ARE EASILY TRIGGERED, DON’T READ THIS!!!!

where do we go from here?

servant looks out from an alleyway. the stench of blood lingered in the air, it would still hold the metallic taste for weeks. he did this, he thinks. he did this. he smiles and allows himself to have a little pride in his work. the world, so deep in despair. surely the hope afterwards would be glorious?

he hears his name being called. not his name, of course, but the name they have given him. the despairs have given him. 

he doesn’t quite remember his name.

it doesn’t matter really.

and neither does he.

the person calling servant was kamukura. enoshima had given him to the ultimate hope as a gift. he wasn’t a great gift. 

enoshima was dead now, of course. tsumiki was inconsolable. she had vowed to kill the man who killed enoshima. servant wondered where she was now. 

after her death, despair stayed put. he’d thought that if the catalyst died, so would the despair. it turned out the remnants could keep it alive on their own. 

despair is a weed. despair is a weed that anchors into the deepest depths of your soul and refuses to leave unless you kill it. and it is hard to kill. servant thinks that if despair is a weed, hope is the flowers that grow from that weed. 

hope was growing now though. he spotted the first person outside other than the despairs today. he killed them, of course. but still. hope was growing. 

the red sky smiled at him. it had her smile. 

servant smiled back at the sky.

and he turned heel and ran after kamukura.

they sat at the top of a building. it was quiet. despair wasn’t quiet.

despair was loud.

despair was looming and giant and overwhelming. 

despair had a huge presence.

he guessed this calm was the hope he’d dreamed of seeping in. 

he was a little sad he was still alive. he’d have loved to die for hope.

despair was a sight.

it was rotting corpses, maybe days, maybe years old. it was screams and cries and maniacal laughter as you cut into innocents, fuelling a great fire that burnt happiness and purity and love. it was loved ones turning on each other, it was people who had so little to live for giving up their lives, it was chaos and it was death and keeping one person in a family alive to feel the pain of losing all they love.

he hated despair.

and he adored it.

he really was feeling sentimental, huh? looking back on the last, what, four years the tragedy had bloodied their histories with? 

maybe it was the promise of hope that he clung to so desperately. 

eh, who cared. all servant cares at the moment is hope, despair and serving kamukura well enough that he won’t abandon him. 

there was a sudden flurry of movement and servant turned to see it. kamukura was stood and looking down on him. servant scrambled to his feet too. 

he was just a servant. a nameless, useless servant. he had no place taking up kamukura’s time. 

maybe a week passes. maybe it’s two. servant lost track of time ages ago. 

despair is leaving, life is returning to normalcy. it’s a line on every headline, whispered though radios that people huddle round. 

sometimes servant believes it. he believes it when he sees a green tree, when he can conjure up a memory of before, when he looks at kamukura and doesn’t feel inferior, he feels almost equal, he feels whole when he looks at kamukura.

sometimes he doesn’t. he doesn’t believe in hope on the dark days, on the days when his nightmares feel close to swallowing him whole, nightmares of falling from a plane crash, nightmares of being kidnapped and of a bright smile and sharp nails and a hand that seemed as though it was reaching out to him and as he grabbed for it, it pulled him down a bottomless pit, laughing and smiling as they fell together. 

he loses faith every morning, and every evening he regains it. 

a cycle, of hope and despair and luck and pain and love and hate, consumes his life. 

it always has.

it’s comforting at least. 

kamukura and he travel. they don’t know how people will react to the right hand man of despair in the public. 

travelling is nice. but servant missed something. he’d been travelling all despair, what did he miss? 

kamukura spoke of things that he didn’t quite understand. of course he didn’t, he was just a stupid servant.

kamukura spoke of a boy with green eyes, a talentless boy, longing to be loved by the world. servant once asked where that boy went. 

“gone.” kamukura replied, and even through the emotionless filter of his voice, he sounded as if he wanted to cry. 

servant didn’t ask about that boy again.

they hear children laughing one day. servant sneaks a look at the children. they were... playing. they were playing in an empty street, kicking about a deflated ball. they probably only knew despair. it made him smile, the sound. reminded him of five children he tried to look after. he wondered how they were now.

hopefully happy. 

those kids never knew true happiness. 

kamukura suggests they find somewhere to stay. travelling wasn’t going to work out, he said. as hope creeps back, they need to live somewhere. 

servant agrees with him. he always does. 

they find a small house near a woods. he doesn’t remember the last time he saw so many trees. he thought they all burnt.

kamukura fixes it up. it takes a little while, maybe a week?

at the end of every day, servant asks the same question. 

“which talents did you use today?”

“carpenter, builder and housekeeper”

it’s a routine. despair was chaos and they will take any routine they can. 

kamukura doesn’t need his help to work, so servant talks to him as he does. they talk about what they remember from before despair, they avoid talking about red skies and bodies and of stealing hands from corpses. 

kamukura doesn’t smile a lot. he doesn’t cry. he doesn’t yell. but servant swears he heard him laugh once. 

no one believes him.

servant finds it funny that they chose this place to keep people out, and yet people visit them.

tsumiki comes round a lot. she brings stories and she brings sick laughter. she cries a lot. she talks about junko.

“i know she wasn- she wasn’t the greatest. but don’t you miss her?” she’ll say, her eyes misting over. 

servant nods. tsumiki clearly doesn’t accept that answer. 

“of course you don’t. y- you didn’t love her like i did. you still know how to love, clearly.”

“huh?”

tsumiki’ll sigh and thank him for his time. and then she leaves and servant realises he talked about her love in past tense. maybe she’s healing too. he hopes so.

kamukura doesn’t join him when someone is visiting. he finds something to do and avoids interactions.

he has a tally of how many times people have come round. this is tsumiki’s third visit. 

he likes the visits, he does. but he prefers sitting in comfortable silence with kamukura.

servant starts keeping track of time again. the day tsumiki visited was a tuesday, sometime in may.

he listens to battered up radio, an artefact from before all this. 

mioda’s still playing. she hasn’t left her studio in years, perhaps not since the tragedy started. 

she plays her usual music, her music from before, she plays music full of despair and she plays one song, the same song, at 3am, when no one will hear it. 

her 3am song is filled with hope. it always has been. servant thinks that song is the one reason she isn’t dead by now.

it’s a lovely song. 

she talks today. her voice is weak from singing but she still has her voice.

“no one’s gonna hear this but, i gotta say it. i want to leave this damn studio, i want to go see someone, talk with them about something mindless. if someone is listening, you know where i live, you probably care about me, right? i mean, if despair hasn’t made you want to kill me!” she laughs, her laugh turns into coughs, which turn into sobs, awful remorseful sobs, “what the fuck did we do? we killed so many people, i killed people. god, how am i even still here? despair killed so many and it didn’t even kill me.”

there’s a click, and then there’s silence. 

servant makes plans to go see mioda soon. she needs it.

kamukura finds him sat beside a silent radio and nudges him. 

“i finished the kitchen. the house is done.”

he’s always talked like that, in short, choppy sentences that incorrect with how correct they were. 

servant smiles, “where do we go from here?”.


	2. remembering

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> it’s a beautiful day.

servant was remembering.

it came in little shards of the past, little memories of love and laughter and of hope.

sometimes he wondered if the person he remembered was really him, or someone entirely different.

someone hopeful. someone with a future. someone who’d been hurt, sure, someone who’d seen a lot but someone who had become more than what had happened to them.

he knows this person is him. they have the same hair, same face, they are one and the same in all but the eyes. servant’s eyes are weary, no longer spiralling into despair, but they are tired. and the him from before’s eyes are alight with hope. this him believes in a future, this him is... happy.

he was happy once. 

he hopes he can be happy again. 

and sometimes he is happy. sometimes he can sit on the windowsill and smile, and he can not think about her at all. he can entirely forget despair.

he’s worried about kamukura though.

kamukura doesn’t seem happy ever, to an outside view. servant knows he can be happy, he’s just bad at expressing it. 

he fidgets with his hair when he’s anxious. he cracks his knuckles when he’s angry. he hides away when he’s sad. servant once found him holding something, something that looked familiar. it looked like a hairclip, though he didn’t get a good enough look to confirm that. 

when he went looking for the clip after that, it wasn’t there. 

kamukura talks more when he’s happy. he talks about plans for the house, and the plants he wants to try growing. he talks about wanting to go out to town one of these days, to see how humanity has rebuilt itself. 

he talks and servant listens. that’s how it’s been for these years. 

and he thinks he’d never grow tired of listening, of hearing kamukura speak and explain and just talk.

kamukura speaks more of the green-eyed boy, a boy long gone. a boy who only exists in memories and stories. it’s a pity he doesn’t remember the boy’s name. then maybe servant could’ve made a memorial for him.

servant listens to the radio, listens for news, listens for any hints of his friends being out there. 

he hears that saionji disappeared a few months ago, and they still haven’t found her. she probably doesn’t want to be found, she’s probably hiding, just like him and kamukura. 

he hears koizumi disappeared recently. maybe they’re sheltered together. he hopes they’re safe. 

tsumiki is still working. she’s working for hope now, working directly with the future foundation to help people who’ve been hurt by the tragedy. she’s probably overworking herself. maybe he should go check on her.

mioda’s been spotted outside again. she found out where they lived from tsumiki and sent them a letter. so that confirms two things, she’s okay and the mail system is working again. servant hopes she’ll come round sometime soon.

the world isn’t all perfect. 

he’s heard stories that pekoyama and kuzuuryu are in holding for their crimes. he prays to whatever god that’s survived despair that they’re okay. 

he hears reports of murders that make his stomach twist. 

just the fact that he’s disgusted by the death is a big step forward.

he’ll have the nightmare, sure. but he hasn’t lost hope. 

he hasn’t lost his hope.

at least his luck hasn’t hurt anyone around him. 

nothing’s gone majorly wrong. nothing is so broken it’s unrepairable.

he thinks this house is a metaphor for himself.

it gets broken, it gets damaged, it was so rundown before that he didn’t think kamukura could fix it. but he did. and he’s repairable too. he’s been boarded up and fixed and he’s... he’s here. he’s here, for better or for worse.

he hopes its for the better.

(its been a while since he could say that truthfully.)

he’s here because of kamukura. he’s here because kamukura wasn’t in despair like the rest of them. if he was, servant would be dead. 

or maybe kamukura was in despair, and keeping servant around was more despairing than killing him. 

either way, he owes his life to the ultimate hope.

sometimes he has dreams. he dreams his luck will hurt kamukura. he dreams that they will go tumbling from the sky, they will fall like icarus because servant dared get close to anyone. his luck is sadistic like that. he dreams the kamukura will not be there, and the despairs will creep back in. that she will creep back in. 

he dreams that kamukura will leave him of his own free will. no luck involved. no misfortune. just kamukura realising he doesn’t care about servant. realising he is boring and he gains nothing from being around him. 

that’s a lot worse than him dying to servant. 

he doesn’t want to be alone. he’s never wanted to be alone. 

even in despair, he was never alone. 

he was always hanging around junko, caring after the warriors of hope, teaching monaca, he was always near someone, anyone. 

maybe he would’ve felt the most despair if he’d have created the loneliest life for himself. he’d be entirely alone. no one to hurt. but no one to help, no one to care for.

it is always his natural instinct to care about people. 

he has never once stopped loving people. 

he can’t remember a time when he didn’t care about anyone.

it’s too bad a lot of the people he cares for don’t care about him.

at least as a servant, he’s always near people. 

he likes it that way. 

sometimes he thinks he’d like to rewrite the past. rewrite despair, rewrite his past, rewrite everything awful. 

and sometimes he thinks this is for the better. 

after all, the sun is always brighter after a storm. 

and hope is always more beautiful after despair.

he’s just a dumb servant though. a dumb hopeful servant, who longs for the past and fears the future. what does he know?

he’s been thinking a lot lately though. maybe too much. 

he should just forget it, he has more important things to do than think about hope and despair and luck. like go and check on kamukura.

and so he does. 

he finds kamukura outside, starting on his garden. servant offers his help. kamukura doesn’t need help, of course. he’s more than capable of doing everything himself. but servant likes to feel useful. 

maybe he’s more of a hindrance than a help, but what can you do.

they end up just preparing for the garden, and kamukura draws up a layout for where he wants everything, all the raised banks, the herbs, the flowers, everything.

he’s really amazing.

servant listens to him talk about his- their garden. he sometimes wonders if he’s dead, for listening to kamukura speak, and just watching him is like heavan.

the sun’s hitting the horizon, and it bathes the world in light. 

it’s a beautiful thing, sitting and watching and listening and just existing in such a wonderful hopeful world. 

he hopes for many more days and many more sunsets.

and he knows that as long as hope lives, he’ll get them.

it gets too dark to stay outside quickly, and so he goes inside. 

and it’s a beautiful day. 

and it will lead into a beautiful night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> woo!!! this took forever to write,,, 
> 
> i think my kamukura simp jumped out here ngl


	3. completeness.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> life is a puzzle. it’s almost complete. servant just needs to find the final pieces.

servant is stupid. servant is stupid and he doesn’t know anything. servant is just a stupid stupid stupid servant and he doesn’t understand. 

he doesn’t understand anything.

he doesn’t understand this heaviness in his soul and this feeling of regret. he doesn’t understand, he doesn’t understand, he doesn’t understand. 

he’s scared and he doesn’t understand why.

he thinks the despairs are back to get him but it can’t be them. it can’t be. 

this isn’t despair. 

despair was wild and insane and it was such a feeling. such a sadness, a maddening thing, something you would chase and chase to the ends of the earth and you’d fall off the edges of the world just to catch it.

this felt like loneliness. this was an ache, an ache he felt in his heart. a longing for something he couldn’t have, someone he couldn’t have. this feeling was just there, there like the waves on the beach, constantly crashing against the sand, so soft but so destructive. it was the soft ache of a wound long healed. 

it scared him. it scared him more than anything. 

servant knows being alone, he’s been alone for a long time, too long to recall. he knows all about sadness and losing people and hurt and loss and grief and pain and harm and misfortune and unending cycles of death and death and death.

so why does this scare him? why is he so scared of a little ache? a soft quiet ache, a soft quiet never ending ache? 

he doesn’t have time for this feeling. he doesn’t have time to mope and to think about his heart and the tides of his yearning and he doesn’t have time to be sorry for himself. 

he has to pick himself up, shove down his sadness, and do his job.

and that’s exactly what he does.

he hasn’t seen kamukura today, maybe he’s just out in the garden or maybe he’s just really quiet or maybe he’s gone out. there’s another possibility there but servant doesn’t want to think about that. 

he cleans and he thinks and he wonders if they have anything to do. 

he doesn’t really wander much. there’s a room upstairs he’s only been in once. maybe he’ll see if it’s changed. 

he pushes open the door slightly. it’s dark, even in the day. the light that slipped through the crack in the door didn’t help. he builds up his courage, sighs and pushes open the door.

servant doesn’t believe in monsters, he doesn’t believe in ghosts, he doesn’t believe in fantasy creatures. but what servant sees is about as rare as any of these. 

he sees kamukura, he sees him sat on the floor, curled in on himself, crying silently. 

kamukura looks up, and servant sees something he thought alien to the ultimate hope. he sees emotion, raw emotion. he looks into bloodshot eyes, and he looks into the red eyes he’s known for so long, and he sees pain.

and it hurts him, it hits him like a spear to the gut, like a bullet to the heart. 

it hurts to see kamukura in pain. 

servant sits next to kamukura. and he listens. servant’s a good listener. 

“i’ve, ive been having these dreams, i think they’re dreams.”, his voice felt uncertain, broken. “it was fine at first, it was just going back to the tragedy, or- or her.”

“i guess they’re nightmares. i don’t think i’ve ever dreamt before this. so, when i dream that you’ve died, that- that you’ve died at my hands, it scared me.” he sighed, “it scared me to death.” 

kamukura, the ultimate hope, the emotionless machine, was scared of losing him? killing him? 

servant was reminded of his own nightmares and he began to speak quietly, his voice barely a whisper, though he knew kamukura could hear it.

“i get what you’re saying... i dream about you dying. maybe it’s my luck finally catching up with me. sometimes i dream you’ve left of- of your own accord, no luck involved. you’ve realised i’m boring, i’m worthless, i’m nothing to you and you leave.” 

he was interrupted by the realisation he was crying. he hadn’t cried in a long time. 

“i’d never do that.” 

a soft whisper escaped from kamukura’s lips. and servant realised he wasn’t lying. 

“maybe i would’ve in the past, but i think, i think that’s not an option anymore. i don’t think i could bring myself to leave you.” he almost sounded like he didn’t understand this inability to leave. like it was a new feeling, alien to him. 

servant nodded. there weren’t any words to express what he wanted to say, but kamukura seemed to understand. the ultimate hope stood up, and servant followed suit. 

they didn’t speak of nightmares again. they already knew what they needed to. 

it was only after he left that he realised the quiet ache had left. 

the pieces silently fell into place. 

and servant had a feeling of completeness, a simple contentment. 

he thinks this is hope. 

and for the first time, he doesn’t second guess himself.

it’s around six in the afternoon when he checks the clock and he sits at the doorstep, eating leftovers. kamukura joins him, and he brings a question. 

“how much do you remember of before? before the tragedy, i mean.” 

servant thinks for a second, “bits and pieces, i remember a few things. then again it was, what, four years ago?”

“five,” kamukura corrects him, “do you remember about yourself from before?”.

“this is going to sound really dumb,” he sighs, “i don’t remember a lot about myself. not even my name. all i have as an identity is this title the warriors of hope gave me.”

the ultimate hope paused for a second, and then spoke. “nagito. nagito komaeda.”

he grinned, “i like that, nagito. guess you don’t know your name until you hear it.” 

kamukura let out a small laugh, “guess you don’t.”.

kamukura and serv- nagito sat on the step of their house, viewing a recovering world with their recovering eyes. 

and it felt right. 

it felt complete. 

the final puzzle piece slid into place.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> woo!!! that’s the last chapter!! god this was fun to write, hurt/comfort is just 10/10 amazing we adore it


End file.
